Tanzania: What to Expect / Highlights
Wildebeest and Zebra Migration
Over 1.4 million wildebeest and 200,000 zebra and gazelle, relentlessly tracked by Africa's great predators, migrate in a clockwise fashion over 1,800 miles each year in search of rain-ripened grass.
Serengeti National Park
Tanzania's largest National Park and indisputably one of the finest wildlife areas anywhere in Africa. The landscape consists of vast open plains in the southeast, acacia savannah in the central area, wooded rolling hills in the north and extensive woodland, black clay plains and mountain ranges in the western corridor. The area is renowned for predators. There are excellent opportunities for seeing lion, cheetah and hyena as well as the plains game great and small. The bird life is particularly rich with many migrants.
Ngorongoro Crater
There is an impressive assemblage of wildlife within the 11-mile caldera of this collapsed volcano. The Crater is the permanent home of up to 30,000 larger animals, almost half of them being zebra, and wildebeest. Animals resident within this vast intact ecosystem include lion, elephant, black rhino, warthog, hippo, buffalo and many plains herbivores such as wildebeest, Thomson's gazelle, zebra, eland and reedbuck. An abundance of predators are drawn by the vast herds of antelope.
Mahale Mountains National Park
Dramatic emerald peaks and fine white sand, lapped by the crystal clear waters of Lake Tanganyika make this an opulent and stunningly beautiful place. No doubt the highlight of your experience will be with the chimps. Every day you have the opportunity to track the chimpanzees in the stunning tropical rain forest with skilled guides and trackers.
Selous Game Reserve
Located in the south, the Selous forms the basis of the biggest wildlife sanctuary in Africa, covering 46,500 square miles of virgin wilderness. It is a unique and untouched habitat offering an interesting mixture of riverine forest, miombo woodland, acacia thicket, palm groves and open grasslands interspersed with steep wooded hills, lakes, marshes and sand rivers.
Ruaha National Park
Animals from both East Africa and Southern Africa may be found here (for example you may see hunting dog, roan antelope, sable antelope, lesser kudu and Grant's gazelle). The variety is amazing and there are also large herds of elephant, buffalo and predators aplenty. It is one of the wildest, most remote and relatively little visited Tanzanian parks and offers about five thousand square miles of wilderness.
Katavi National Park
This is Tanzania's third largest park and one of the country's best kept secrets. Here vast herds of buffalo graze on fertile wetlands amidst flocks of water birds. The grassland plain along Lake Chada supports high concentrations of lion, leopard, zebra, masai giraffe, and black legged topi.
Tarangire National Park
This park covers approximately 1,600 square miles and in the dry season is second only to Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area in concentrations of wildlife. It is a scenic gem with expansive views, in which wide panoramas of wooded savannah stretch in every direction. Its outstanding feature is its river, which is the only reliable dry-season source of water available to wildlife in a vast stretch of Tanzania's Rift Valley. It therefore attracts tremendous concentrations of animals.
Lake Manyara National Park
This beautiful park is made famous by its tree-climbing lions and is also home to an amazing variety of birds and animals considering its small size. The park is actually tucked between the lake and the sheer rock walls of the rift valley escarpment that tower 2,000 feet above. Expect to see elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, warthog, hippo, several species of antelope and loads of baboons.
Mt. Kilimanjaro
Africa's most famous mountain, evocative and snow-capped rising from the plains.